I was wondering if there are any gamers of the female persuasion on this board…I’d hate to think I am the only one.
What do you play? I’m curious because I want to know what women gamers are into at the moment. I know the Sims games are pretty popular(and I am addicted to TS 3)but what games are your favorites? do you play MMORGs?consoles?PC single player offline?
I have pretty “eclectic” tastes in games…for the PC,I have TS 3, Age of Empires III,Civilization IV,Sim City Societies, Zoo Tycoon 2,Roller Coaster Tycoon 3,Grand Ages of Rome, CivCity Rome,Sim City 4 and Emperor:Rise of the Middle Kingdom. I love city building games,RTS style games and the cheapie $9.99 Target games like Diner Dash.
So girl gamers,let’s talk games.
Here I am! Most definitely a girl gamer.
I much prefer RPGs but I’ll play lots of different things. Right now I just beat Mass Effect 2 and am replaying it. I love all of the Final Fantasies. I loved Diablo, Age of Empires, and Mechwarrior. I also loved Bioshock but it’s too scary to play twice. Eternal Sonata, Prince of Persia (PS2), and I can’t remember off-hand what else. Oh! Dragon Age is awesome.
Generally I prefer swords and sorcery to guns, though as evidenced by my love of ME I will play with guns. And I played one of the Call of Duties to the end, but that was the only FPS (other than Bioshock) that I have played.
I never, ever play online. I really hate it. For every good gamer you find there are 27 assholes and most of them are teens. I’m 34, I’ve got no interest in playing with teens. My SO plays the shooting games online a lot; I have no idea how he can enjoy it.
And I vastly prefer consoles. 1. I can just stick the disk in and play, and 2. I have a 47" TV screen and a 17" monitor. No comparison, not remotely.
Nice to meet ya!
Free online turn-based RPGs, if that’s what counts.
(Right now a game called Sourcery Quest is driving me crazy, because there’s all these special features and privilages and stuff that you have buy gaming tokens for. What kind of idiot pays real money for extra credit features? That’s my philosophy when it comes to these things, anyway. But it’s really getting on my nerves, the way you even have to pay for turns if you don’t want to wait two hours).
Nice to meet you too!sisters in gaming:)
I LOVE Final Fantasy…I played through most of them and X just blew my socks off. I still can’t believe a game that old can still manage to look so freaking good.
I prefer consoles for certain games,such as Madden and NASCAR. They are just too tedious on the PC. I am also pretty addicted to my handhelds. I have a Nintendo DS and a PSP and they go with me anytime I travel. I love the RPG games on the PSP…Final Fantasy(all of em), Valkyrie Profile,Jeanne D’Arc and Sid Meier’s Pirates. The DS is awesomely cool…COOKING MAMA!,Pokemon(as much as I hate to admit that,those little bastards have me hooked),Meteos, and Professor Layton.
I got hooked on search and find games a few years ago and I have quite a few on my PC. Right now I am playing the Mystery of Sleepy Hollow. It’s a fun game and only $19.99 at Target.
I hate the snot nosed punks I tend to meet on gaming boards. It’s nice to find grown up gamers:)
I mostly play World of Warcraft, but enjoy all forms of gaming. I’m about to get the latest Ratchett and Clank for PS3, and I’ve also been playing Plants vs Zombies on the computer. 
I’ve pretty much been gaming in one form or another since the Atari 2600. I think as time goes on more and more of us adult female gamers come out of the woodwork. You see it in games - there are more options for women gamers to play, such as romances and such. And in the last several games I have been playing female characters more and more because of this - way back when I always played male characters just because they had more options. I mean, just look at Baldur’s Gate II. THREE romances for the guy (granted, they all pretty much sucked) and one for the female. Regardless, I still played the female - I liked Anomen, once he’s straightened out.
Mass Effect is one of my favorite games for a female character. Female Shephard is no less tough and badass than Male Shephard, and even when you are playing “paragon” (sort of the kinder, gentler version) that doesn’t make her sensitive or tender, it just makes her consider other things more.
The only minor, minor complaint I have is there is a female-female option and no male-male option for the romance, and there was one for Dragon Age, so why are we stepping backwards? But that really is minor! Generally I love the game.
Oh, I forgot to mention my most favoritest game ever - Planescape Torment.
Heck yeah!
Generally, I play Xbox, mostly RPG and FPS. My favorite are the RPG/FPS hybrids, like Oblivion (Elder Scrolls IV) and Fallout 3, which is my current obsession. I also like games with a puzzle or problem-solving aspect. We got the Orange Box and I was really into Half-Life 2 for a while, but kind of drifted away from it. I *loved *Portal, but it was too short. I also picked up BioShock, but never finished. Have to get back to that. Both my husband and I like shooter games better with a partner, so we play together. We love Left 4 Dead, and we’ve played Halo (2? 3?) a little.
We also have Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but those are more party games. We borrowed DJ Hero from a friend, and that’s much more single-player oriented (even though you can add in guitars). I was pretty into that, too. We may have to get our own.
I haven’t yet played online; it doesn’t particularly appeal to me. Maybe I don’t know what I’m missing, but I’m fine with that for now. I’ll check it out if I ever get sick of playing alone or with friends.
ETA: I totally agree with Anaamika. I’m really happy to see games with female characters that are just as kick-ass as the male ones. I was kind of tickled with Portal in that respect, because you couldn’t choose your character; you just defaulted to female. Also, the “boss” was female (okay, a female-voiced robot), and they even made references to the lab’s “Take Your Daughter to Work Day”.
OMG how could I forget Oblivion and Fallout 3? Two of the best games I have ever played, hands down. (But you see what I mean about female options! Fallout 3 has one hooker you can sleep with and she’s female.) Oh well.
As for games you can play together, Heart of Dorkness, I highly recommend Army of Two (FPS but you play best with two people) and Borderlands (Shooter/RPG).
Here!
I’ve been playing home video games since the Atari 2600 was the hot system - barring when I got to play some games of Pong at a friend’s house - and did some arcade gaming too.
My main obsession is World of Warcraft on the PC. My husband and I both play - I got him into online MMORPGs - and we often group together with or without other members of the guild we’re in.
My latest gaming besides WoW:
PS3 gaming: I use the PS3 to play Rock Band 2 and The Beatles: Rock Band. I mostly sing; I’m apparently pretty hopeless with the hand-eye coordination for the instruments.
Wii gaming: Occasional Rayman’s Raving Rabbids or Sam & Max, otherwise it’s mostly EA Sports Active.
DSi gaming: Animal Crossing: Wild World, Popcap’s Bookworm, the Professor Layton games.
My usual response to a question about favorite games is “Bioware games.” I love their single-player RPGs (Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Baldur’s Gate 1/2, and will still to this day fire up Baldur’s Gate 2 on the PC and do a playthrough. Unfortunately my computer is not up to spec to even play the first Mass Effect game, so I’ll have to wait on that and its sequel until I get a new computer.
Yeah, that was a little WTF. I’m still hoping to find a cute dude somewhere who’s up for some action. And if not for my sake, then for all the gay gamer boys out there! Please, won’t someone think of the gays?
Thanks! I was totally salivating over the ads for Bordelands, but we figured we’d wait until it was cheaper and there were more reviews. Good to have a thumbs-up!
Bioware RPG games tend to be decent for that. You can pick your character’s gender. As for romance, going by memory - In Knights of the Old Republic, a female main character can have a bit of a romance with a particular male NPC or another female NPC. (A male PC is stuck with one female option.) In Jade Empire, male PCs can romance two separate women, the two women at the same time, or a man, while female PCs can go after one of the women or the man. In Mass Effect, either gender PC can romance a NPC of the opposite sex or a feminine-appearing neutral gender NPC. I suspect that Dragon Age carries on with some of this more “flexible” romancing.
Dragon Age has a flat out bisexual elven male that your male can romance (or your female). I was really pleased with this. He’s not bad-looking, either. And they just put it in with no fanfare. Very nice.
HoD, we truly loved Borderlands, though it does get hard at times. It is way more fun with two people, though.
If you want ass kicking women,Soul Caliber has some great ones. I wouldn’t want to piss off Ivy for any reason.
I have been spending more time on my PC,mainly because hubs has discovered the Military Channel. Dammit. So I have been playing a lot of the Sims 3. I like to download stuff for it because most of the stuff that conmes with the game is pretty lacking. The EA store has really pissed me off…Malleus,Incus,Stapes(great name by the way,bet not to many people know what those are) mentioned paying for content and why it’s stupid and that is my biggest beef with TS3. EA charges you for “points” in order to buy downloads from their site…isn’t it enough that I pay $29.99 for every expansion? greedy bastards,they are making a KILLING on the sims franchise just from disk sales.
How is Dragon Age?It looks pretty cool and I like RPGs.
You don’t seem to be alone here. I guess I’m old school: I prefer RPGs (you know, other people, dice, etc) but as far as computer gaming, anything D&D (old Gold box games) and all Final Fantasy.
There are no girl gamers.
ok…ok…that used to be true.
My 16 year old daughter and her friends play video games…which I told her would have elevated her into a dizzying height of geekdom when I was her age. So, times are achangin.
I still assume every ‘girl’ I meet on these things is really a guy even if in chat he insists he is a girl…and I still suspect I am right over 90% of the time.
Play Mass Effect. Both have cute dudes for the ladies to play with. Cute aliens, too. All told, there’s 7 possible romances in Mass Effect 2, 3 for either sex plus an hidden Asari character who, like the one in Mass Effect 1, will sleep with anyone on account of Asari biology (they’re a monosexual race that’s nevertheless sexually compatible with almost every other race in the galaxy, and indeed seek to in order to increase their gene pool, although they can also have kids with each other somehow. It’s less sleazy than it looks. Most of the time.).
And besides that, they’re absolutely great games. Number two even more so.
As for Dragon Age, if you don’t loooove Alistair… why, you’re just gay, my dear. He’s scientifically designed to appeal to every single female out there. If his cute mugdoesn’t do it for you, his voice acting will. Of course, if you’re more into Italian bad boys, there’s always Zevran the bi elf. But really, he’s not as cute and cuddly.
I started gaming when I was about 4 years old, when my dad was home on leave we would let me help set up the pieces used to do ‘sandbox’ gaming, we did napoleanics mainly though we also used to do reoman campaigns just using napoleanic figures =) In the early 70s we were at a GenCon and some guy had a fantasy based game he was getting people to try, and as i had really enjoyed Tolkien I gave it a whirl. I played D&D until AD&D came out. I sort of paused when I met my exfiance because he considered reading fiction and gaming ‘excapist’ :rolleyes: Once I ditched him I got back into gaming at Campaign HQ in Norfolk, met husband and we moved up to Connecticut. Didn’t game up here because we live in the arse end of nowhere, and getting a game group together was pretty impossible. I got given an amiga by mrAru [replacing the one I abandoned when I bailed out on abusive ex] in 95 because I had surgery and chemo and was stuck in bed for almost 4 months.
On amiga I played eye of the beholder 1, 2 and 3 [frequently enough in the case of eob 1 that at one point of time after recovery from surgery I could give someone a verbal walk through on the telephone starting at the log in and get them to the end in 3 hours] Better Dead than Alien [egoshooter] Black Crypt [RPG] Castles [um, logistics?] Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back [DM 1 and 2 basically, RPG] Dark Seed was a bitch on wheels. Amazing graphics, and it was on a timer instead of freeform. Took me months to get to where I could win. Leisure Suit Larry 1 [I still have the original game on the original floppy, the previous owner of the computer sold it to mrAru along with the computer] Populous, Silent Service 2 [submarines] Sim City, X-Com [3 of them as I remember] and 688 attack sub. That was fun, I used to play the 688s at lan parties against actual submariners stationed on 688s =) and mrAru was stationed on several different 688s during his career 
I got online with a PC in 1998, but still played games on the amiga and PC, rather than doing much more online than email [it was sort of the AOHell era for me until 1999 when I got a real ISP, and discovered Everquest. I played EQ [and also eventually became a GM] until I got asked to start beta testing EQ2 and one of my DEV friends hooked me up to also beta test WoW. I decided I reallly preferred WoW, so when it went live I quit EQ totally and switched to WOW. Almost 2 years ago a bunch of us from SDMB started playing EVE Online, and I have played EVE, WOW, and beta tested a few other games, and have accounts that I occasionally play on Runes of Magic, and Aion. I still will beta test just about anything if asked
I mainly play EVE right now, but thanks to health issues I don’t play 10-12 hours a day like I used to last time I was also out of work.
I have noticed when I play EVE, I am more girly, and conservative but when I play a fantasy game, I have a very macho go to hell style of fighting that is not too feminine [probably because I know it is just electrons and dying doesn’t lose me anything] I find EVE interesting because it is very logistical and tactical - a lot of people really don’t think it is a game, really since you do stuff like mine, manufacture, sell and buy as much as go to war and kill stuff.
The “casual raiding” guild I’m in for World of Warcraft has a fair amount of female gamers. Most of them are married and their husbands play too; sometimes their kids play as well. (We know they’re real women because we use Ventrilo voice chat for raiding/tough dungeons, and our guild website also has a “post your picture” thread.) But yeah, assuming a player is male is a pretty good bet to make, much of the time.
This demographic is definitely on the rise. I’ve played MMOs for a few years now, and I no longer believe all girls are guys. Instead, all girls are either guys or spoken for. 
Our guild leader is a single, attractive, successful woman. She’s also a lawyer who works for the federal government, and our guildies’ comments about being afraid of her aren’t entirely baseless. 